Following a Climbing Valuation, Facebook Splits Stock 5-for-1

Companies sometimes split their stock to match industry standard prices, or make it more affordable for smaller investors, and sometimes they’re also signaling to the market that the share price has been growing, and will continue to do so. For one or more of those reasons, Facebook is announcing today that it splitting its stock 5-for-1, meaning that it has increased the amount of all outstanding stock by five times without changing the value of the company itself.

The company tells The Wall Street Journal that it believes “employees will appreciate receiving more shares even though the overall value of any particular grant wouldn’t change,”and notes that it previously split stock 4-for-1 in July of 2006 and again in October of 2007.

Facebook doesn’t share its valuation, but private secondary stock sales have put higher and higher since last year, and near $30 billion today. Investor and board member Peter Thiel confirmed that approximation at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference earlier this week, and said he thinks the company is one of the “least overvalued or most undervalued” in tech today.